It’s official sports fans; we have a formidable contender for worst film of the year!

We first meet Lenny (Adam Sandler), Eric (Kevin James), Kurt (Chris Rock), Marcus (David Spade) and Rob (Rob Schneider) as 12-year-old boys winning a middle school basketball championship. Flash-forward 30 years. Their beloved coach has died and the teammates, who have remained friends into adulthood, converge on the small New England town of their youth to pay homage and catch up. Lenny is an über-rich Hollywood agent (and embarrassed by how his wealth is affecting his kids), Eric owns a furniture store, Kurt is a stay-at-home dad, Marcus appears to make a living as a womanizer and Rob is a New-Age Vegan masseuse.

Since they’ll all be staying at a lake house together over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, they decide to bring their families along for the ride, including Lenny’s ambitious fashion designer wife Roxanne (Salma Hayek); Eric’s wife, Sally (Maria Bello), who is still breast-feeding their 4-year-old son; Kurt’s wife, Deanne (Maya Rudolph); and Gloria (Joyce Van Patten), Rob’s wife, who is double his age and then some. Picking up where they left off years before, what follows is basically a long weekend of adolescent pranks and juvenile behavior.

In 1983, the Oscar-nominated The Big Chill was released, a movie about eight high school friends who come together in middle age at a remote South Carolina winter house to celebrate the life and mourn the death of one of their own. Grown Ups borrows this plot wholesale and spins it into comedy, a metamorphosis I do not remotely begrudge them—it is a perfect set up. But while the potential for greatness is everywhere, so is the utter lack of preparation, concern and professionalism. It comes as no surprise that the talent (a word I am having difficulty typing with a straight face) behind the camera is perfunctory and bland. Dennis Dugan also directed two of the other worse movies in recent memory, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. I’ll say this for him: at least he’s consistent.

Grown Ups is as sloppy a film as they come. It is patently unfunny, filled to the brim with self-evident, obvious humor and jokes that are dead on arrival. Although the credits claim there was a script (from Sandler’s pen, no less), vast parts feel improvised, something that would not usually be a problem if the improvisers were remotely funny. The juvenile screenplay (and not in a guilty pleasure sort of way) is little more than a random collection of fart jokes, linked one after the other. It feels as if it was written by the pre-pubescent boys playing our leads in the flashback sequences; the humor certainly soars no higher than their diminutive level.

Most of the film you simply find yourself thinking, “Wait, aren’t these the same guys who most people consider the comedy giants of their generation!?” Unless restrained by another, far superior creative force (Paul Thomas Anderson, Judd Apatow), Sandler’s recent career is a cautionary tale in self-mutilation, and Grown Ups, despite its star power, is his messiest yet. Some of the actors, like Rock, are spectacularly bland, as if they literally forgot how to be funny (when Schneider is more interesting than you are, you know you have problems). And I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but Spade is actually the most compelling member of the group.

Despite some aspects of its heart being in the right place, Grown Ups, like its characters (and one suspects, its stars), is embarrassingly infantile. Growing older certainly doesn’t mean growing up.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by Dennis Dugan
Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, Maya Rudolph, Joyce Van Patten
Rated PG-13 for crude material including suggestive references, language and some male rear nudity.
Running Time: 102 minutes